


The Hours

by knighthart



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Falling In Love Again, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, James and Harry were husbands, Love Confessions, M/M, The Golden Circle Never Happened, learning to love again, talking about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26344126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knighthart/pseuds/knighthart
Summary: Harry lost his husband, James, and then he started to realize that he was falling in love again.
Relationships: Harry Hart | Galahad/Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, Harry Hart | Galahad/James | Lancelot
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	The Hours

On the day that James died, Harry came back home alone. The house was quiet and, although Harry was used to the quietness of that place when James was off on a mission, the silence hit him with a type of graveness that Harry never felt before. 

James won't come back home. Still, the photos of his husband on the walls and the running shoes that he had left close to the door, that Harry hadn't had minded picking up, was telling him a different story. Had James really died when there was so much proof around Harry that he was still here? That he was minutes away and that Harry would receive him with a half-smile and a disapproving look over James' lack of capability of putting his shoes in their right spot inside the entrance closet.

Harry didn’t know how much time he wasted standing there, looking at James's shoes and listening to the clock ticking. All that Harry could feel was a type of numbness and a sensation of denial that he was fighting against. Deny what had happened wouldn't help him. So, he reminded himself that James was dead. Dryly, he supposed that his heart and mind would accept that affirmation better if there was a body, which he could bury. But there wasn't a body. Kingsman didn’t recover the bodies of its agents, it was a protocol that both James and Harry knew too well because they buried unconteless friends with empty coffins. 

James' funeral will take place in a few days, his casket will remain close the entire time and, if asked by James's family the reason why Harry will lie and say that he accident that took his husband life was so horrible that it disfigured his face so utterly that they didn't have another choice but protect James' dear ones from that hellish view and pain that watch James in that state would bring. If they insist, Harry will argue that James demanded it and they will believe it because they knew how vain James could be, how beautiful he knew he was and how he would absolutely hate if the last image everyone would have from his face is one that doesn't represent its true nature. 

Those thoughts, how deeply he knew his husband, made Harry smile a little, a weak and rueful thing, but a smile nevertheless. And it was what finally broke Harry's heart after a whole day of holding up and assuring Merlin he was fine and that, yes, he wanted to take over James’ mission. The pain was released in a burst, very similar when dams break, drowning an entire city. 

"Oh, god," he exclaimed, putting his hand on the wall hoping that it would be enough to prevent him from falling. Then, he leaned all his body against it and made his way down, while sobs interrupted his breath. "God," he repeated without knowing why. 

Harry never believed in God, maybe it was what made everything harder than it already was. There wasn't any kind of comfort, there wouldn't be an after, Harry would never see James’ bright smile again. His husband just ceased to exist.

*

Eggsy's call was a welcome distraction and, at the same time, a curse because he was a reminder of how Harry met James during a time where he committed one of the biggest mistakes of his career. Lee Unwin's sacrifice allowed Harry and James to have time, uncountable hours when they were able to get to know each other until liking turned into love and their friendship became a marriage. Harry couldn't put in words how guilty he felt about failing with Lee and, at the same time, thankful that he wasn't the one that died that day. He was determined to repay Lee and help his son. It seemed a proper tribute in his and James' names.

However, when Harry wasn't working to finish James' mission, something that he was as determined to do as well, or helping Eggsy with his training, he felt a terrible emptiness in his chest. It was like his heart had folded itself over and over again until it had occupied the minimum space possible. And, while laying in bed, looking at the fan spinning, all that Harry could think was in James's absence. 

Grief wasn’t a strange feeling for Harry. He had lost his mother at a young age and his father when he was in college, he also lost a lot of friends. Still, death never quite dismantled Harry this way before. How ironic it was that Harry, someone that faced death in the face so many times before and sat by her side when she came to take his loved ones, was feeling like he was just meeting her for the first time. And how could he move on after this?

Once Harry read a book called The Hours by Michael Cunningham. It tells the story of three different women during a whole day in their lives, they are all connected in a way that goes beyond the suicide thematic of the book. But the true jewelry is its title and how it is correlated to the book. The author describes hours as something to be endured instead of appreciated. He put them as something to be feared because, even when you are having a good day, the hours to come can change to something darker and crueler. It's a quite depressing view of life and, indeed, the women in that book and the other characters as well were nothing but depressed. 

Now, Harry understood what it meant to endure the hours. One, after another, after another, and ask yourself if the turn between them will eventually make his pain disappear or if he will just have to keep enduring them until he decides he just can't anymore. That thought was scary, Harry could be pretty reckless, but he was never suicidal. He knew it was the grieving talking, all the sorrow whispering things that Harry didn't really intend to do, but was hearing with attention anyway. 

But even though he didn't want to die, those painful feelings managed to make the death look less terrible. That’s why in the second before the grenade he settled at the university exploded, Harry wasn't afraid. 

"If I die," he thought. "Well, it happens."

Then there was only darkness...

at least until he woke up at Kingsman's medical wing.

*

Before losing consciousness, Harry saw his entire life flashing before his eyes and asked himself if James saw it too when he was about to die. When he woke up, he asked himself why he survived and James not. He couldn't help himself but feel a little betrayed by life and death. It, somehow, felt terribly unfair to him, which was crazy. A lot of Harry's feelings in the past months felt like early signs of craziness. He should be happy he survived, he should be happy that he would be able to bring James' murderer to justice.

Still, he was inexplicably angry at the universe. It was the type of angry that wasn't even logical and that prevented Harry's mind from forming coherent thoughts.

Life and Death, Harry learned through his life, were indeed curious creatures and that's it. One can make a philosophical evaluation of them or even scientific studies. One can create poetry and write books about them. One can fully feel them in the hours of the day where the entire world feels like a vivarium. But, still, they will never be completely understood even though they are as natural as the rain. They won't ever have the same meaning and weight for everyone. Even for the same person death can seem different and make one feel a variation of feelings from relief to immeasurable pain. Life and Death can be pretty unfair, or not. A person whose life was taken from them at an early age from a cause that wasn’t natural could see death as unfair, a person who was enduring pain beyond imaginable would consider death a fair and waited rest. It's all perspective and experience that belongs to each person only and that shouldn't be judged by someone that not itself. 

That all didn't matter for Harry. Maybe, someday, he will be able to sit in his chair and think about Life and Death with an open heart and a kind of resigned acceptance that comes to all that lost someone. But for now, Harry will take the anger, and the pain, and the lost and the weight of the hours and push himself to move forward. To live, to see what the hours will bring to him, and to outlive James the best he could because he promised James he would.

He forced himself to be playful around Merlin and Eggsy, trying to ignore how Eggsy was as different and as similar as James in a lot of ways. He forced himself to smile and have a meaningless chat with Valentine, even though he wanted nothing more than to rip his head off. He didn't have to force himself to smile at Eggsy or be proud of him when he completed his tasks, he was, for a short amount of hours, truly happy and proud of Eggsy. It was the first time in months Harry really felt something that wasn't the clenching sorrow or the unbearable numbness in his heart.

That night, while Eggsy was in his house, Harry felt less alone. There was music and talking, and drinks and the lights were up and he felt alive. There were still a number of photos of him and James on the walls, and Harry was thankful that Eggsy didn't ask about them. Besides that, all of James' belongings were gone. Harry donated it all, he didn't need any memoir to remember his husband. It wasn't until Harry was in his bed, a little drunk, that he started to feel stupidly guilty about enjoying that night like it was a kind of sin to be that happy and not to be constantly thinking about James.

He knew it was complete nonsense to feel that way and James would have agreed. How many times have Harry and James laid in that bed after a complicated mission reassuring each other that if one of them dies they want the other to move on to find happiness again? The problem is that Harry felt that it would be inappropriate to move on too soon. Especially because for the past weeks he has been truly noticing Eggsy.

Harry wasn’t sure why he didn’t notice how Eggsy was beautiful before, being married didn’t blind Harry for the beauty of other men and women before. On a lot of occasions, James and Harry brought a guest to their bed to spice things up a bit, as James liked to say. However, now that Harry noticed, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Or how Eggsy was smart, rough in his corners, and terrible gently, sometimes even naive.

That kind of admiration and attraction were dangerous, they could evolve to something more meaningful and Harry was aware of it even though he thought he had no reason to fear it all because Eggsy was so young. Hence, Eggsy wouldn't have any interest in someone like Harry. Someone that way past their prime, someone that was way too damaged by life, someone that was decided to not love again. Still, there was a little spark of hope in Harry's heart, a spark of hope that he didn't want to, that he shouldn't have.

He saw that spark of home in the way Eggsy looked at him that night and bit his lips as someone that is both hungry and thirsty for things other than food and water. But Harry did then what he was doing now, laid in his bed, he ignored it and he will keep ignoring it. 

*

Unexpected things can be quite awful, such as James' death, or they can be quite marvelous, like surviving again after being shot in the head. When he opened his eyes Harry couldn't believe that he was really alive, but he knew he couldn't be in heaven because all the pain would be gone if that was the case and he couldn't be in hell because the pain would be greater then. And if he had ceased to exist, well, he wouldn't be able to watch Eggsy sleeping in the chair beside his bed.

The young man seemed tired, drained to his bones. He was wearing a sweatshirt, the type that Kingsman gives to his agents to sleep in when they are too tired to get back home after a mission. Eggsy also seemed older, and it made Harry ask himself how long it has been since he was looking at Valentine's gun while thinking that this time he was a little afraid of dying because it meant that he would have failed with James and Lee.

But Harry didn't have to wonder for long, because Merlin entered the room. Merlin's eyes widened and he grinned, Merlin rarely grinned and Harry imagined what kind of hell fell on earth to his friend show such a range of emotion. Quietly, Merlin approached the bed while looking at Eggsy as he was afraid to wake up the sleeping man.

"Galahad," Merlin said. "Good to see ye awake."

Harry wanted to talk, wanted to ask an infinite number of questions, but he had no strength to do such a thing. However, Merlin was good at reading him. He sat at Harry's other side and told objectively what had happened. How Eggsy insisted, after saving the world, to break the protocol and how Merlin, that had assumed Arthur's positions temporary said "Fuck it, let's do it". He told Harry how they found him in a hospital, how lucky he was, how they were able to transport him back home when he was stable enough and how it has been six months since then. 

He also told Harry about how brilliant Eggsy was, how he became an agent taking over Bors mantle after Born took Arthur's position. When Merlin told him that Eggsy killed Valentine and his assistant, Harry felt vindicated. Eggsy wasn't the new Lancelot, but it was poetic that the man he was starting to care so much more than he should was the one that killed James' murderer. It made Harry smile fondly, it made Harry think, while the painkillers were making him unable to control his heart and mind properly, that James would approve of Harry's feelings towards Eggsy.

"I'll let ye rest now," Merlin said. "Ye have a long road towards recovery ahead of ye," he added. "Fortunately it seems that ye won't go through it alone," he continued, making a head gesture that pointed towards Eggsy and Harry turned his head to watch the sleeping man while Merlin was getting out of the room.

Harry fought against sleep, his heart was aching deliciously and he recognized those feelings. He didn't name them, he wasn't ready to name them yet. It was the last thing he was able to process before he lost the fight and fell asleep as well.

*

Talking about unexpected things, Harry hadn’t expected to fall in love with James, it just happened. One day James was just another colleague, and in the other Harry was realizing that he loved in James the same things that he hated in himself, which was incomprehensible for him, but love does this with people. James could be annoying, always making unsolicited jokes or comments. He was also a smug show-off. Eggsy and he was very similar in that aspect even though James had a refinement that Eggsy didn't have yet. Eggsy was also very kind, while James had a vision of the world that was affected by growing up in privilege.

As the days were passing by, Harry started to notice a lot of similarities and differences between James and Eggsy, more even them before. It was why he became aware of his feelings towards Eggsy, it was why when Harry accepted that he was in love he didn't see it as something unexpectable. Harry knew well why he fell in love with Eggsy and it wasn't because Eggsy reminded him of James, quite the contrary actually. 

Harry fell in love because of all the living contradictions in Eggsy, how his character was complex and surprising in the most out of the blue way. It was because at the same time Eggsy was abrasive like a flame capable of burning everything around him, he was also kind in a way that made you believe that the world was indeed full of good people. He cared too much about everyone. His smugness, as Harry learned, was more a defense mechanism than arrogance or self-assurance. Sometimes Eggsy didn't even realize how sublime he was and it hurt Harry to an extent that was alarming.

When Harry was with Eggsy, the hours weren't things to be endured, they were things to be cherished even when they were absolutely terrible. Harry spent weeks in a hospital bed and even more, weeks torturing his body back to health. Somehow it didn't feel like enduring hours when he expected them almost anxiously because he knew Eggsy would be by his side. Because he knew Eggsy would tell him stories about his missions, and his sister, and Roxy, and Merlin, and countless other things that mattered for Harry because they meant something even bigger for Eggsy. Because he knew Eggsy would put a comforting hand on his shoulders and smile at him, making the hole that James left in his life seems like part of the view. Natural.

Life moved on, just like that. Just like the time passes and the rain falls and death...happens. Harry still loves James, he always will and he will always miss James. That put aside, Harry was in love with Eggsy. Of course, he didn't intend to reveal his feelings, to make a big thing out of it. He was satisfied in just loving Eggsy at a distance. The fact that Eggsy was in his life, the fact that Eggsy was triumphing, that he was happy was enough for Harry.

But love, as life and death, have its ways to be an uncontrollable force and act on people's lives. Though Harry could love in silence, Eggsy couldn't do the same and it was that sealed their fate.

They were at Harry's house. Eggsy made Harry a martini and Harry sighed not only because it was the first drink he was savoring in months, but because it was perfectly done. Eggsy, who was sitting in front of him, was smiling proudly.

"Good?" He asked.

"It's perfect," Harry replied.

What followed was a moment of silence, where neither of them knew what to say next. It wasn’t a bad silence though, it was the type of silence that happens when you know a person so well that words seem meaningless, and, for the past month, Harry welcomed Eggsy in his life so completely that Eggsy knew Harry almost as well as James once did. So, Harry and Eggsy glared at each other, making the tension between them grow, making all the truths that they both knew come to the surface, making the invisible words float around them.

"I love you," Eggsy blurted. "Shit," he said giggling. "Shit, Harry. I'm sorry," he added, as he didn’t believe that he really said that. Sometimes you just have to admit your feelings, even when you don’t want to do so, and they just get out of you.

"For loving me?" Harry asked with a raised brow, his heart was pounding not out of terror, but of excitement. "I don't think love is something a person should be sorry for," he smiled gently. "It's not an imposition, love. It's a gift."

"Only if it's welcomed," Eggsy argued, looking resigned. "And I can't possibly believe that this would be the case here. At least, not for the type of love that I want to give you."

When did Eggsy become so wise? Did it happen while Harry was sleeping or before, when Egssy thought he was dead? Or even before that and Eggsy just didn’t have an opportunity to show it yet. It didn’t matter, Harry wanted to know more, to taste more of it.

Harry could tease him, he could ask what type of love Eggsy meant, but looking at Eggsy's eyes and the way they were so smitten by Harry's presence, he knew what Eggsy meant. It was the type of love that makes one feel alive, makes one pass hours wondering, makes one fear, causes joy, makes one wake up one morning believing that things as gods can exist. It was the type of love that makes your heart be unfolded until it becomes so big that one can't distinguish themselves from what they love.

It was the type of love that Eggsy meant, the type of love that Harry once felt, and was feeling again. It terrified him and at the same time filled him with such happiness and lightness that Harry felt like he was being embraced by life. He had a decision to make, but the decision was already made a long time ago when Harry woke up in the bed, happy to be alive and he was happy that Eggsy was there.

"What if I want it all?" Harry said, surprising Eggsy. "Some people may think it is selfish of me to accept love again, you know why," he continued, almost unsure, almost trying to get approval. "But what if I want it anyway?"

And Eggsy understood what Harry was saying. He knew what Harry had faced in the last year, he knew Harry's insecurities and fears. Eggsy himself was afraid and insecure, but it wouldn't stop him. He had no intention to be a substitute for James and, if he ever thought it would be the case, he would never have left himself to fall in love with Harry. Harry wasn't looking for a substitute either. Love, they were starting to learn, similar to life and death is different for everyone and even for the same person it also can present itself in different forms.

"Fuck them," Eggsy replied, making Harry chuckle. "Who cares?"

"Certainly, not I," Harry said. "Come here," he requested softly as he expected Eggsy to say no, but Eggsy got up and walked towards Harry that welcomed him with open arms. 

Eggsy sat in his lap, they stared at each other with eyes barely open and noses touching. They could feel each other's breath and each other’s warmth. 

On the wall, the clocking was ticking.

Slowly, they dived into a kiss.

In the book, Clarissa wonders why people wish hopelessly for more hours knowing that pain can come in the future. And this was the reason why, Harry thought with the weight of Eggsy's body against himself. Because the hours that we have to endure will lead to hours we cherish and, after a while, the hours we endured will seem little if compared with the ones that anchored you to life and that makes you breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I was already planning to write a story with this plot and, for those that follow me on tumbler (@knightthart) you probably saw me talking about it, but I was with a lack of inspiration until I finished reading The Hours by Michael Cunningham and wow, what a book. It's pretty sad, full of T.W with you have depression, but it is a great book and I just needed to write about it.
> 
> The concept of The hours, men...that's tattooed in my fucking heart.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it and PLEASE, let me know what you thought while reading it or if you ever read the book I mentioned.


End file.
